Category Archives: inside the nest

Yup, those are wild turkeys crossing the road. Did you know they can fly?

It has been a very long time since I’ve done a personal update. Bad me. Most Sunday nights I think about what happened during the week, and there’s just nothing to talk about!

The same is true this week, but I thought I would do an update anyway and let ya’ll know why I’ve been quiet this week. On Monday I came down with a fantastic summer cold, and today, Sunday, I’m still getting over it. I’m mostly better now, but my cough is lingering. I swear I sound like a foghorn.

The worst part about being sick was I had a horrible headache for the first 3 days, so I couldn’t even read! So now I’m playing catch-up even more than usual. Yet again I bit myself in the behind by not having reviews scheduled, but … I have a love/hate relationship with scheduling content. On one hand it makes me feel good to know I have content ready to go for the next few weeks, but on the other, I like to be in the moment. Does that even make sense? If not, don’t mind me.

Anywho, being sick reminded me that I’ve been wanting to do more personal posts, and perhaps branch out and do some other types of posts on the blog. I figure as long as it relates to reading, it’s fair game. I also want to bring back Fit Owl Tuesdays, when I don’t have something else scheduled.

For a last fun tidbit, for the last week and a half I’ve gotten to test version 2 of the Ultimate Book Blogger Plugin. Let me tell you, it’s fantastic! I know a lot of bloggers are switching to WordPress (apparently Blogger went on a deleting rampage?), and if you’re thinking about it, make sure to check out Ashley’s plugin. It’s amazing. I can’t wait to start using it here! Ashley also makes me want to get my geek back on. It’s been way too long since I’ve done any coding. No time, though :/

On that happy note, be sure to check back later this week for some reviews!

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. Honestly, my life is pretty boring (and I usually like it that way!), so I would just write the same thing week after week. I spend my time doing one of a few things: reading, at work, attempting to write, or trying to avoid cleaning. The last one’s for my mum — Hi mom!

I said in my March summary that while I had learned about the April session of Camp NaNoWriMo, I wasn’t going to participate. That resolution lasted all of half a day. I set a goal of 35,000 words, which I thought was reasonable considering I didn’t really start until April 10 or so.

Because I have a spreadsheet fetish (I do!), I made one to keep track of my daily word counts. But I didn’t restrict it to just book writing. I included a column for reviews, because I spend a lot of time writing reviews. So far in April I’ve written (or have started) 13 reviews. I actually should have written a few more, but I’m trying to keep from burnout and not making myself review every book I read, although I’d like to. And I’ve read 16.5 books, plus some fanfic.

The number for “Fun” is an estimate. As much as I’d like to have the exact numbers for that category, it’s easier and faster to guestimate. “Fun” is a category for all my fun writing, like fandom and fanfic. As you can see, that’s my biggest percentage, and always is whenever I keep track of my words per month. Seeing that number usually makes me wish I could just turn my fanfic into fic. That would be nice.

So, I doubt I’m going to meet my goal of 35,000 words for my WIPs. I’m not too upset about that, because I think I’m finally learning how to write crap. Yup, write crap. I self-edit when I write, which is okay for short pieces. Stuff under 2,000 words. I hit a block on WIP 2 last week, and I was despairing, thinking, I’m never going to write anything over 1,000 words! But then, I started typing junk … and I hit almost 2,000 words. And I do mean junk — I’ve got multiple tenses in one sentence, different characters talking in the same paragraph, misspellings, and horrid grammar. But I am okay with that, because when I edit, I can clean it up. But I can’t edit and clean it up if I don’t have anything to work with!

That’s something I’ve been trying to do for a very long time. I tend to rewrite the same sentence or paragraph over and over until it’s just the way I want before moving on. It’s like I have a mental block. Honestly, it drives me nuts. But then a lot of things in my head do. LOL.

If you’ve made it to the end of this post (and I don’t blame you if you haven’t), I have a question for you. If you do something else that takes up a huge chunk of time, such as writing, how do you balance that with blogging? My site visits are down 50% this month, and I have a feeling that’s because I haven’t been posting as much and have been trying to write more. I could sleep less, I guess, but I really like my sleep.

I skipped last week because I didn’t have much going on, and I’m in the same place this week. I’m almost finished with my reread of Harry Potter, which is a little sad. I always hate to leave Harry’s world … although of course with fandom, I never really leave it

If you’ve emailed me lately and I haven’t replied, I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m trying to finish up a review schedule, and I’m behind on emails. I will get back to you, I promise.

In case you haven’t noticed, www.leeanna.me has a new layout! After a debacle with trying a themes site (pretty themes, but not easy to redo 400+ posts to match!), I found a framework and modified it. I should have ironed out all the problems, but if you happen to notice anything weird, please let me know!

This week I also read this post by Gennifer Albin (author of Crewel) on shiny happy ideas. I definitely fall into this trap — anytime a new idea pops into my head, I get excited and want to do something with it. This goes from story ideas to new blogs. I keep wanting to start a fitness blog, but then I tell myself I don’t have time to keep up two and do everything else I want to do. I actually wanted to start a finance blog at the same time I started this book blog, but I didn’t think that one through until after I set everything up. Then I realized it wasn’t such a great idea.

The fitness blog will still probably happen at some point in the future, lol. So much for learning from my mistakes!

What a week! I barely remember most of it. Thanks to getting the flu, I think I slept at least two days out of the past seven, if not more. I couldn’t even read or watch movies, because I had a horrible headache the majority of the time. I missed out on 99% of Bout of Books 6.0 . I’m going to try to do a readathon once a month or so, so I’ll make up for it in the future.

I’ve somehow managed to fork up the RSS feed for the blog. I’m not sure that happened, so I’m not sure how to fix it. Fingers crossed that I don’t have to reinstall WordPress. I think I’ll be bringing back my Linky Followers widget, and aside from the Facebook page which I’ll be promoting more, I’m not sure how else to really track followers. Bloggers on blogspot have it easy, with GFC! I could do an email newsletter, but I don’t know.

I finally published the Facebook page for this site. If you want to click over and Like it, I’ll return the favor if you have a page.

I’m seriously considering signing up for Elegant Themes. I could code my own theme, but I’d rather spend my time reading and writing. I know I’ve noticed some other book bloggers using them, does anyone have any feedback about them?

Not much else going on for me this week. I’ve been playing a lot with Scrivener. The corkboard feature is awesome! I’ve never been able to outline, but the corkboard feature is really helping me. It’s the electronic version of writing each scene on an index card and moving the cards around. Now I just have to expand on those scenes

About

My name's Leeanna (which you probably figured out), and I'm an avid reader. I read anything and everything from YA to fantasy to nonfiction. I love all sorts of geeky things from Star Wars to Battlestar Galactica to the stock market. I run on Android and a Mac Book Air. I harbor delusions of publishing someday.